2.5 Years Old- Schedule and Update

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Caroline is officially 2.5 years old as of last week! She is just blossoming and it has been such a joy to be a part of. Her kindness and thoughtfulness are really shining right now, and her stubbornness is as fierce as ever.

She’s got a new favorite song (Body Like a Backroad by Sam Hunt), and is interested in knowing the names of every song that comes on the radio, along with who sings it.

She’s excellent at narrating life as it happens, and is always curious to know other children’s names. She’s using her pronouns perfectly now, and she’s starting to distinguish boys and girls much easier (I’d really never realized how challenging this would be to teach!).

She thinks every woman is a mom, and every man is a dad. She’s interested in learning how to read, and still loves to explore outdoors as much as possible. She’s super social, yet shy at times as well.

Schedule

Nothing has changed since our last update. She can handle taking later naps, yet still falls asleep very easily around 12:30. She goes through small phases where she takes awhile to fall asleep for both her nap and bedtime, but then (just as I’m worried she might try to drop the nap), she comes around again and starts falling asleep easily.

Caroline is eating so well. She still loves her fruits and veggies, and is willing to try new things when we ask her to. She’s pretty set with what she likes and dislikes, but we can at least get her to try things.

She eats a large breakfast and a large lunch. Lunch is almost always a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with cherry tomatoes on the side and a few other things.

Dinner usually consists of her trying something new, and she tends to not end up liking it and not eating much. Since she’s eaten so good throughout the day it never seems to phase her, so we’ve left well enough alone.

Mama is STARVING now that I’m pregnant! I eat every 2 hours or so and I am snacking all the time. This has resulted in Caroline snacking with me.

Her meals haven’t seemed to be affected much, so that’s been a huge plus. I managed for 2 years to not be a snacking household and have her eat 3 good meals. That is all out the window at the moment as I manage my way through this pregnancy!

Sleeping

Caroline is sleeping very well. As noted above she’ll have some short periods of taking a long time to fall asleep for nap and bed. The phase is just a phase and she quickly gets back to falling asleep well.

She plays and “reads” and talks a lot before bed just as her way of calming down. She’s always enjoyed this time. We are now asking her to stay relatively quiet, however, in preparation for the new baby and sharing a room.

We are hoping to teach the idea to her ahead of time so it’s not too much of a shock to her when the baby is sleeping in her room and we ask her to stay quiet.

Caroline has requested several times to no longer wear pull ups while sleeping. We’ve given it a shot on a few occasions, but always end up putting them back on.

While she has the desire to not wear pull ups, she’s still having accidents at night without them, and I am not willing to sacrifice her sleep for the cause. Now, that being said… in the last 3 days she’s been waking up in the middle of the night pretty consistently and asking to go potty.

She’s made it every time and had no accidents and no wet pulls ups for 3 nights straight. In the morning, she requests that I check to see if her pull up is dry.

She’s very focused on this working apparently! Suddenly she’s doing a fantastic job and may be night training herself at this point! This is more what I had in mind! It’s been exactly 1 year since she was fully day time potty trained!

Wake Time

Caroline loves to go out. She requests that we go on playdates all the time and just really seems to enjoy it! That being said, I am trying really hard to stay home more and incorporate independent play (room time) in preparation for baby #2.

While we have a long time until the baby arrives (December 2017), I don’t want all of the changes to be sudden, and I don’t want her to blame the baby for a change like having to stay home more.

My goal is to stay home once a week and incorporate independent playtime on those days. It might not sound like much, but with school, gymnastics, and errands to run it becomes challenging!

Caroline finished her second full year of doing a Mother’s Day Out program. This year she attended a different school, but still went once a week for 4 hours. She loved every second of it. She’d come home and talk about her friends and everything they did at school. It was a fantastic experience, again!

Next month, she’s going to a different school where she’ll attend twice a week for 2.5 hours. This school has a summer program as well as the regular school year program, so she’ll go year round.

This will help me, since Joe’s busy time is in the summer when most schools let out. I also think Caroline is going to love going twice a week!

Gymnastics is still going strong a full year later. She loves going and she listens well. She’s also still really enjoying everything and is doing so good at the activities. Her strength just shines through at unexpected times, and I know it’s largely due to gymnastics!

We took her horseback riding recently, and the trainer was commenting on how strong her core muscles are to have such good balance on the horse. She was right! Caroline did amazing and it was really neat to see!

Caroline likes to pretend that she’s a train on a daily basis. When I call her Caroline, she corrects me and says “no I’m a train”.

Sometimes she also calls herself a “vent”. She noticed a long time ago that the engine of a train has vents on it, so this is her way of saying she’s the engine car. I often get to be the caboose 🙂

Independent playtime is going great again (we had taken some time off). She does a full hour in her room. Often, she just wants to sit in her chair or lay on her bed and talk. She occasionally looks at a book, but for the most part just rests.

Milestones/Interests

Her favorite TV shows are still Dinosaur Train and Daniel Tiger. She tried Sesame Street recently, however, and really took to it. This is the show she’s now requesting when we do watch TV.

We got her a tricycle a couple of weeks ago. She loves going down small hills and then “coasting” as she says! She puts her feet up and just lets it roll! She’s getting stronger and trying to go up hills, but it’s still difficult for her. She takes off on flat ground, however!

Caroline is excellent, absolutely excellent, at identifying her emotions and feelings. In the last month or so she’s also done a phenomenal job at stopping a fit and asking for help calming down. “Mama will you help me calm down, please?”. I then give her a hug and everything is ok. She tells me if she is frustrated and why. I’m amazed at this progression.

Caroline still really loves to help in the kitchen and make meals. It’s become a great family time.

She is very interested in reading. She often makes comments about how she’s bad at reading. I have no idea where she got this from, but we are reassuring her that she’ll learn to read soon! She can recite books like “Go Dog, Go” to us pretty much word for word. She refuses to do it lately, however, because, as she says “I’m not reading”. She knows she’s not actually reading the words and it bothers her. I downloaded a few reading apps to get things moving and we will start working on this when opportunities present themselves. In the meantime I’m just trying to encourage and praise!

Caroline is very interested in names. Names of songs, names of other children, names of anything and everything. We just got home from the grocery store, and we had to stop and talk to 3 other moms with kids just to find out their names. Caroline is too shy to ask or say her own name, but she begs me to ask for her.

She likes to play tag and hide and seek, but rarely follows the rules LOL! She pops out before you can find her, and she’s always “it” in tag!

She likes to pretend she’s a baby and can’t talk. She fake cries and points out all of the things she could do when she was a baby.

She talks nonstop. Everywhere we go, people comment on how talkative she is and ask if she ever stops! In context I think she is mostly understood, although she’s gotten a little lazy with some of her sounds lately and has actually become harder to understand as a result. She’s also talking a mile a minute, so that might be why! All in all her language skills are very impressive, however, and she uses such big words!

At bedtime, her new favorite thing is to be held in the chair. While I don’t love that she’s delaying bedtime, I do love the extra snuggles that we get!

Caroline loves to be naked and give naked hugs! She especially loves it if she catches you while naked and gets a double naked hug in!

When family visits she warms up SO fast. It maybe takes a minute LOL! It’s amazing to see her show so much love.

On our latest date night, Caroline practically kicked us out of the house so she could have her date night with Auntie!

Caroline loves bath time. She plays and talks with her Dora toy. She talks so much we can actually step away and give her time alone in the bath while close by and checking in on occasion!

Her favorite toys are still her little character toys (Daniel Tiger characters, and Buddy and Tiny from Dinosaur Train). She just lets her imagination run wild with these toys and has a great time playing with them. I think they are officially the most used toys in the house.

Now that I’m pregnant, she calls me “Baby Mama”, and sometimes calls Daddy “Baby Daddy”…obviously we just crack up laughing!

mamasorganizedchaos

Hi there! I’m Katrina (aka Mama). I am a former engineer and chemistry teacher, turned stay at home mom and mom blogger. I have been blogging since 2015, and have taken my love of engineering and science, and tried to applied many of the same methods to my parenting adventure.

I have a huge passion for Babywise and prioritizing sleep for our children. I am mom to 3 (including one angel baby that had trisomy 13). A huge mission of mine is to share her story and legacy. I am a big believer in being real and doing what works for YOU.